


Wake

by Stakebait



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Angel finale, a moment of mourning</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glossing](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=glossing).



  
It was daylight before Angel asked Illyria where she'd left the body.

"In the gutter," she said. "Is that not what one does with refuse in this world?"

Angel tried to run her through, then, and bent his sword.

She watched curiously as he recoiled. His strength was almost spent. "His spirit is gone from the shell," she explained. "The rest is dross."

Spike draped an over-familiar arm about her. "It's a human thing, love. We're rather partial to our dross."

Illyria cocked her head. "But we are not human," she said.

Angel reached down to her feet and closed Gunn's eyes. "No," he said. "But we're all that's left."

Spike clapped her on the shoulder. "Go fetch the corpse, there's a good demon," he suggested.

"You do not command me."

Angel staggered to his feet and glared at her defiantly. "I do."

Spike spoke over him as if he were not present. "It's not about commands, pet, no matter what the Grand Vizier here would have you think. There's things we've got to do. Things Wesley would have wanted."

Illyria arrested her dismissive motion. "A ritual."

Spike shrugged. "More or less."

*******

Angel tied the tie from behind. It was easier that way, almost like his own. He of all people had no need for a mirror. An unwanted sense memory filled his throat – tightening William's cravat, just like this, until the boy's voice cut off at last and there was only silence and the scent of his hair.

Wesley's hair stank of blood.

His skin didn't, at least. Angel had washed the body himself, snarling at Spike for taking a step towards him and reaching one hand. He made Spike stand in the hallway, though he left the door open. He wasn't being petty, no matter what Spike thought. It hurt too much to see him cross the threshold of Wesley's apartment uninvited.

Angel didn't need any help. He had seen his mother lay out her share of bodies in the old days, before he became the one who laid them low.

Soap and cloying talcum powder masked the sweat, the smoke stains on his fingers, and the urine that no one, however reserved, can avoid finally letting go. Wesley's blood, the smell of rotting fish and salt and fear that wasn't his. He remembered. Angel's head swam with the need to lick the skin of his belly, just above the scar. But they were watching him, so he only closed the gut wound with a needle, biting the white thread off with his teeth.

It was covered now with a prim t-shirt and a blue dress shirt still creased from the cleaners. The suit was old – the cut was classic and the fabric unworn, but the jacket strained across Wesley's broadened shoulders. Didn't matter. Not like Wesley needed to breathe.

The bag it had come in draped the kitchen table, and crackled when Angel lowered the body down again. Wesley would approve of keeping things clean.

Someone – it must have been Spike, but Angel wasn't looking so he could pretend – flicked the lights off. Angel lit the stash of cheap emergency candles and placed them around Wesley's body in any glass that would hold them – warming his cheeks, his folded hands, his bare feet where Angel had failed to force the dress shoes to fit.

Angel had failed at a lot of things. Mostly he was very bad at dying. Wesley, as always, led by example.

"He looks very orderly," said Illyria. "Do we chant now? When does he become alive again?"

When Angel turned around, Spike was rubbing his knuckles and Illyria was holding her cheek. "Come in," he said.

"Bout time. Thought the neighbors were gonna call the police," Spike grumbled, though he knew perfectly well LA's police were too busy to care.

Angel took Wesley's good scotch from the cabinet and laid three glasses on the table. He filled them all, sloshing over the edge from cup to cup, and then slammed his back and filled it again. "He called himself a rogue demon hunter," he said without preamble. "Wore leather head to toe."

Wesley's second toe was longer than his first, Angel realized. He'd never noticed that before. Illyria was saying something about a book, and Angel wondered how long he'd been crying.

**Author's Note:**

> Glossing wanted Angel, Oz, Wes, Giles, and/or Buffy, in any combo, with neckties and/or bare feet. I suspect this enormously depressing reaction to the Angel finale was not what she had in mind.


End file.
